Robert W. Gregory Wins 2016 AIS Early Career Award

Robert W. Gregory, Assistant Professor in IESE’s Information Systems Department, has won the prestigious Association for Information Systems (AIS)Early Career Award for his promising work examining novel IT phenomena.

Spanning topics from digital transformation to human-machine symbiosis, his research was honored in Dublin at the December 2016 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in a special session recognizing the best and brightest in the field.

AIS aims to serve society through the advancement of knowledge and the promotion of excellence in the practice and study of information systems. Each year, senior AIS scholars recognize individuals who, although still in the early stages of their careers, have already made outstanding contributions to the field of information systems.

A Fast-Track Career in IT

Professor Gregory received his PhD in Business Administration (specializing in Information Systems) from Goethe University Frankfurt, and his research began attracting international attention soon after.

His work on organizational ambidexterity capabilities and the management of paradoxes in the context of digital transformation was among those to receive Best Paper Award nominations from the German Academic Association for Business Research and the CIONET community of 4,000 European CIOs.

For his dissertation on the management of global information systems projects, he won the Alcatel-Lucent dissertation award in 2011. He was also a finalist for the Targion 2011 dissertation award for Strategic Information Management.

Professor Gregory joined IESE in September 2013. Currently, his principal area of interest is digital transformation, which encompasses topics such as digital business strategy, digital innovation, the consumerization of IT, organizational ambidexterity, managing strategic paradoxes, competing institutional logics, and designing organizations and systems for human-machine symbiosis. Financial services, automotive, and healthcare are industries of particular interest to him.

Professor Gregory approaches these topics through engaged scholarship and establishes collaborative researcher-practitioner relationships in a variety of business areas in which the impact of new digital technology is potentially disruptive.

His work is inspired by the idea of having a positive and lasting impact and creating synergies among various types of research, teaching and consulting activities across multiple contexts and geographies.

His work is presented regularly at international conferences, including the annual ICIS, and has been published in Management Information Systems Quarterly, Information Systems Research, the European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Frontiers and Information Technology and People.